“Why are doctors more suicidal than people in other professions?” – Natural News

This article caught my eye because in my teenage years my family would have quite liked me to have been a doctor and this was where it was headed for me, till as if in one day I did a complete turnaround and went the Arts route. As with many ‘typical’ Asian families, being and doctor or dentist was applauded and encouraged because of the status and income – see the ‘cash cow’ comment in the article below.

I guess I unconsciously intuited the inauthenticity of going for a career primarily for the cash, not the vocational aspect, if you like – the sincere desire to help others. Looking back, I’m also happy not to work in an industry where your livelihood would be directly linked with keeping the Big Pharma machine alive and ultimately making people sick in many cases under the guise of doing the opposite (dodgy vaccinations, questionable cancer treatments, drugs not tested properly and more).

This article was a bit of an eye-opener to me. I had heard of high suicide rates within dentistry previously (whether right or wrong I don’t really know) but not really in the doctors’ sector. I guess the stress and long hours take their toll.

(NaturalNews) For over a century, medicine has been seen an illustrious career choice for many ascribing young men and women. More students every year attempt to be part of the profession, in what has become a cash cow industry. In the 2011-2012 entering class, U.S. medical schools received applications from 43,919 students; 32,654 were first-time applicants – up 2.6 percent from the previous school term. One fact that is rarely publicized to new recruits, though, is that the image Big Pharma and the medical industry has created of medical doctors is but a shadow of the reality. The profession is riddled with high suicide rates, low quality of life and job satisfaction rates.

In a study of 7,905 participating American surgeons, 6.3 percent reported suicide ideation (SI) during the previous 12 months. Shockingly, among individuals 45 years of age and older, SI was 1.5 to three times more common among surgeons than the general population.

Pitfalls of the medical profession

Although, focused only on surgeons, the results from this study could easily apply to any specialty in the medical field. Several factors contributing to these astronomically high SI rates include low quality of life (QOL), high burnout, low job satisfaction, and feeling underpaid

In a study of over 16,000 internal medicine residents, for example, the Journal of American Medical Association reported: quality of life (QOL) was rated “as bad as it can be” or “somewhat bad” by 14.8 percent of U.S. medical school graduates. Overall, burnout and high levels of exhaustion was reported by 51.5 percent and 45.8 percent respectively. Overall, MDs or DOs were more likely to experience burnout than individuals with a high school diploma, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and other professional/doctoral degrees. One key factor to low physician QOL are the elements of healthcare reform restricting medical autonomy, invariably taking the “art” out of medicine as treatment and quality guidelines are set by insurers and Medicare. Many physicians are not only skeptical that these changes will improve patients’ quality of care, they are growing more frustrated by not being able to treat patients according to their personal congruency. Historically, doctors would own a private practice and enjoy a significant amount of autonomy. With how the Big Pharma/Insurance model has evolved; however, most MDs/DOs today are veritable pharmaceutical pez dispensers and have very little freedom to decide aspects of patient care.

A 2012 survey with 24,216 U.S. physician respondents across 25 specialty areas indicate how miserable it is to work in healthcare. Just over half of all physicians would choose medicine again as a career, far fewer than in the prior year (69 percent). Only one quarter of internists and one third of family physicians would choose the same specialty. About 23 percent of all doctors would choose the same practice setting, compared with 50 percent a year ago.

It’s interesting to note that only 11 percent of physicians said that they consider themselves rich, while 45 percent said that their income is no better than that of many non-physicians. Another 45 percent said that although their income probably qualifies them as rich, they have so many debts and expenses that they don’t feel rich. Although it is reported that physician incomes have dropped, it all seems relative seeing that in 2012 radiologists and orthopedic surgeons topped the list at $315,000, followed by cardiologists ($314,000), anesthesiologists ($309,000), and urologists ($309,000). The bottom-earning specialties in 2012’s survey were pediatrics, family medicine, and internal medicine.

It seems straightforward:
1. High stress in these vocations
2. Long hours & extended time away from family
3. Student loan debt – correlation between debt and depression/suicide
4. Expectation that success or achieving a dream would bring happiness, makes it even harder when you realize that “having it all” is not as fulfilling as you had hoped.

Andy Bostian, yes seems like a fair summary of the issues. Your 4th point – indeed, money and success make absolutely no real difference. Except of course to make you look and feel good. But looking and feeling good is still ephemeral. Which is fine, but somewhere inside human beings, there is a wanting it to be permanent, and lasting satisfaction and peace never come through what money can buy.

I can almost understand the high suicide rates for doctors, but not for surgeons (assuming I understand the slightly different terminology used in the U.S. for the two professions).
Surgeons have the great advantage that they can see the results of their work almost instantly, and in general they tend to be very good at it. I would trust a surgeon to saw off my legs and then stitch them back on again without leaving a mark.
Doctors, on the other hand, are usually just floundering around in the dark with their pills and potions. After their huge triumphs following the discovery of antibiotics, when they could quickly cure loads of people who had simple, but often fatal, infections, it all went down hill for them. Now they are left with a handful of patients (by comparison) who have a wide variety of ailments that previously would have been considered as almost background noise compared to those with far more common complaints. So they try and cure these people with drugs that are hardly tested because there are too few patients to test them on, and the illness is so poorly defined that they don’t even know exactly what it is they want to cure. Until such time as medical diagnostics can work down to molecular level, and a cure built on a molecular level, doctors can do no better than a witchdoctor guessing the cure by the arrangements of a dead rabbits entrails. No wonder they get pissed off and top themselves (to use the vernacular).

Most doctors would do better by prescribing an aspirin and an early night – which often works just as well as more fancy stuff.